After Winning Unbound Gravel, Ian Boswell Is Riding For a Better World
Since retiring from the WorldTour racing circuit in 2019, Ian Boswell has been busy. Sure, he still manages to train close to 20 hours every week, but he’s also working for Wahoo as both a brand ambassador and an athlete liaison. Most recently, he’s been slammed with interview requests after taking the win at Unbound Gravel, a 200-mile grinder in Kansas that’s arguably the most prestigious gravel race in the U.S.
Here, we’ve caught up with the 30-year-old on how retirement has been much more rewarding than he could have possibly imagined.
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This interview has been edited for clarity.
Gravel keeps grinding
I did not realize how big the prestige of winning Unbound was; I knew that it was clearly a big event, but it’s just blown my mind as far as how many people follow the event, and just how much media attention it got. Especially coming from a world of road racing and doing what I thought were the biggest races in the world, now I’m doing a race in Kansas, and it seems to get more attention than the races that I dreamt of doing as a young rider.
And of course, it’s cool to see the events happening again. Getting the sense that events have, in large part, returned to a very similar atmosphere and dynamic that they had prior to the pandemic feels good. One of my fears was that I never really got a chance to do a pre-pandemic gravel event. I was worried that you would come back 18 months later, and things would be dramatically different—whether it was the environment or the mood around the events, and that people wouldn’t be there for a good time. But it’s very clear that the culture that has made gravel racing so open and welcoming and different from traditional road racing has come back to right where it left off.
Relearning “recovery“
In hindsight, I probably would have done an easy spin on the Sunday and Monday after Unbound, but just with travel and work obligations, I didn’t have the time. Physically, I was feeling good, but I was swamped after being gone for over a week and jumping back into work. (It’s been a lot of time on Slack lately!)
Now, I’m very fortunate that Wahoo is a company within the industry, so my colleagues also very much understand that it’s a busy time, and they’ve been great about helping out. But there are still things that I’m responsible for. I was out in Emporia, Kansas, for a week prior to the race to do some work with Specialized and Wahoo, so things got backed up. It’s been a busy year, but then again, I did do a 10-hour ride at Unbound. So I’m not chomping at the bit to go out there and do a five-hour ride midweek. It’s nice to actually just chill out a bit.
On being in charge of other athletes
I’m trying to keep this this balance of not getting too far behind on work just because I did well in this race. The majority of my job is working with athletes and I can’t tell them, ‘Hey, sorry, I didn’t get back to you because X, Y, and Z.’ I want to treat those athletes and partnerships the same way that I did prior to this event and continue to provide the same service that I did before. Plus, I need to act how I want athletes to act—I wouldn’t want them to be unresponsive if they win a race!
Packing for gravel versus the WorldTour
In the weeks leading up to Unbound, there were a lot of logistical things going on, because it was my first time having to think about what I actually needed to bring out there. I only have so much room in a suitcase, and bringing hydration packs and extra tires and extra sealant—all that stuff—that is all fairly new to me! How do you travel with so much stuff? I learned a lot in that regard.
Why gravel is more popular than the WorldTour
The mass start of a gravel event and the fact that everyone is on course at the same time makes it really cool. The pros race with everyone else, similar to major marathons. And it’s very likely that the last person to finish before the cut-off may have suffered more than myself or [2021 second place finisher] Laurens Ten Dam or [2019 Unbound winner] Colin Strickland. It’s such a funny thing to think about, how in endurance sports, everyone really goes through a very similar physical effort. It’s just that the speed is different. And I think that’s why people are drawn to these gravel races, because they get to directly compare themselves with what the fastest person did. And that’s such a cool comparison: there are very few sports where you can compare on the same day with the same conditions and the same surfaces.
That’s such a beautiful thing about cycling in general, because you can also go ride the cobblestones that are part of Paris-Roubaix or climbs that are in the Tour de France. But with these gravel events, it’s an even closer comparison. You actually are on the start line with those riders, you actually get to start with them and hang with them as long as you can. There are no categories at the start. Sure, they divide up results based off categories or age group. But everyone has an equal opportunity, more or less, on the start line to show what they’re capable of doing. I think it really captivates the imagination when you can draw direct parallels between your effort and the efforts of the people who were at the front.
On that new Specialized kit
It’s a kit from the new Specialized Surface Studies line that’s focused on gravel riding. The top of the jersey is very simple, and there’s a poem on the back. It’s funny—the patterns are unique and after the race, someone messaged me to ask why I would wear white shorts. And I think he thought my shorts were that dirty. But that’s the point: The shorts are supposed to resemble different surfaces of gravel events.
I admit though, when I first saw that kit, I was like, ‘I don’t really get it.’ But after doing an event like Unbound, it all makes sense. You’re just a student of the surfaces that you’re riding on. For 10 hours, you’re just studying which line you should be on, how do you set up to take this turn. It’s constantly changing, even within 200 miles—which geographically is no distance at all. It’s big rocks, or small rocks, or a jump onto pavement for a bit, and then you’re crossing a river. The surfaces change almost every mile—there’s something different, there’s a better line, there’s a worst line, there’s a line you might flat on, there’s a line that you’re gonna get sucked off into the ditch. The kit is a reminder that ultimately, it’s the surface below you that is dictating how you ride.
On transgender support and pride
A lot of people have been mentioning the transgender pride sweatband that I wore at Unbound and at the Rule of Three gravel race in Arkansas. My nephew came out as being trans late last summer. And it was an area with a lot of unknowns for me at the time. I obviously read a bit of news about transgender legislation and stuff, but I hadn’t read a lot. I had just come out of a period of my life where I was very focused on what I was doing as a pro athlete and, in a way, almost oblivious to a lot of issues in the world.
At that time in my life, the most important part of my existence was, “How can I be the fastest bike rider that that I can be?” Over the last 12 months since retiring from pro road racing, I’ve realized just how fortunate I have been to live that life and to travel and to do all these amazing things on a bike and make a career out of it. I realize that not everyone has this opportunity. Just speaking more with my nephew, with Molly Cameron, and with some transgender athletes here in Vermont, I’m realizing how incredibly challenging daily life can be for some people. I will never understand that experience. But I can wear the sweatband in support of my nephew and of what Molly is doing in her advocacy work.
It’s so easy to be on a track going forward and just looking at what’s in front of you and what’s happening in your life, and not realizing all these paths of other people. It means a lot to me that I’ve come to this point in my life and this realization. It’s taken 30 years to finally realize that the world is not about me, and there are so many other people out there who haven’t had the same opportunities and privileges that I’ve had. If I can just bring any sort of awareness and attention to the transgender movement at the moment, I want to do so.
If even just a few people take notice and ask themselves: “How can we actually try and understand what these people are going through? And how can we support them?” then that’s a success, in my opinion. I know that if I can just try to better understand their experience, I think it’ll make not just the cycling community, but the whole world a better place. There’s so much more to this world than bike racing, but if I can, through bike racing, help and inspire other people, then what an incredible gift to have.
It’s been awesome to see how much it has meant to people, and how many people have reached out and shared their support, or have asked me where they can get wristbands, or where they can donate money, or to whom they can speak to become better informed. But really, that’s step one. I know that people, especially in our society today, want these dramatic overnight shifts in culture, but that’s not the reality of how things work.
Looking onward to Kenya
I’m heading to Kenya to a new gravel event called the Migration Gravel Race, which is a four day gravel stage race in the Maasai Mara National Reserve. It’s a small event with only 75 riders, and Wahoo is providing coaching to this African team called the AMANI project. The team is aiming to provide more resources like coaching and equipment this year to African riders, not just from Kenya, but from a broad range of countries in Africa.
It’s so cool not just to go to Kenya and race a bike, but to actually race against local athletes who are young and hungry and who are trying to make it to the top level of sport by attending this event. And because I just won Unbound, more people will be viewing the event—what an awesome opportunity for these African athletes to go up against us. Honestly, I hope that they beat me. I think that’d be so good because then people will notice those riders. It would be great if we could see an influx of riders coming from Africa into the European peloton or the American peloton, or gravel racing or mountain biking. Again, it’s an opportunity to provide the life experience and the privileges that I’ve had in cycling to other athletes who are just as hungry as I was when I was their age.
So we’re going over there to race. And then, the top three African athletes from the race are coming to the U.S. on behalf of Wahoo for a few gravel events. How cool is that, I get to do this race in Africa with these local racers, and then I can show them these races in the U.S. I’m really looking forward to that. And I feel like the more events that I can do, and the more things that have a bigger purpose than just riding and winning, it just means so much more to me at this point in my life. It brings me so much more excitement and joy than just going to a race to try and win. I’ve been fortunate to have taken a lot from cycling, and I feel like it’s an opportunity and a time to give back.
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